Lost in the cloud?

Do you know where you are in the cloud spectrum or are you lost? Do you know where your Hyperion infrastructure really is or is your head in the clouds. On this post, I will try to clarify what the three main "cloud" deployment terms are and hopefully you can locate yourself and understand where you are.

With the advent of the cloud and services like Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Gmail and, of course, salesforce.com, there has been a lot of confusion on what people are calling the cloud. In reality, the cloud has been with us always, we just didn't call it that.

Private Cloud:

This term is usually used when software is installed by either internal IT staff or consulting firm on infrastructure that is owned by the client. The client owns the infrastructure and also owns the licenses to the software. This is typically what an "on premise" installation means. You have full visibility on the hardware, software, installation and configuration of the app being installed.

If you have Oracle EPM  installed on infrastructure that you own, you are here.

IaaS (hosted solution):

Infrastructure as a Service is used when a client installs (either by an IT staff or consultant) a piece of software on hardware infrastrcture that is leased. The hardware and o/s maintenance and management is typically handled by the firm leasing the hardware while management of the application can be either handled by the client's IT, the leasing firm or a third party. You may or may not have visibility to the hardware being used to provide this service. Examples of this are Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, etc.

If you own Oracle EPM licenses but do not host it internally, you are here.

SaaS (subscription based):

Software as a Service is used when the client pays a subscription fee to use software that is owned and managed by the company selling the subscription. Salesforce.com, iCloud, Office 365 are perfect examples of this type of deployment. The client does not own the license nor the hardware in this type of deployment. Also management of the application (up time, redundancy, disaster recovery, etc) is managed by the firm providing the subscription service.

If you have purchased PBCS, you are here.

Currently, for Oracle EPM there is one service that was released earlier in 2014 called Planning and Budgeting Cloud Services (PBCS).  However, Oracle has chosen a few select partners (Infratects is one of them) to test out what they are calling project "Kepler". Kepler is the PBCS release that Oracle uses but for partners to be able to provide the same service to clients. Kepler is still in Beta but it will allow partners like Infratects who provide IaaS type of services with managed services and support the ability to sell subscription based Hyperion Planning to clients. 

Hope this clarifies a bit on the "cloud" terminology and the differences between types ofdeployment. 

Infratects can offer any of these types of solutions with datacenters in Europe and the US. Also, soon we should be able to provide SaaS services as project Kepler matures. 

Hyperion Planning Mobile Features (11.1.2.3.500)

Oracle's latest release of version 11.1.2.3 comes with a very nice new feature... access and support for mobile devices (tables and smart phones). The readme for patch .500 defines that it includes support for the following browsers and mobile O/S'es:

- iOS 7

- Android 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3

To enable mobile access to your Planning application, you will need to make sure that it isn't a Workforce or Capex app as this is not supported yet, however, it supports classic or EPMA applications.

FIrst you will have to obviously download and install the patch, which is about 1.7GB download which can be accessed via Oracle support website or via Oracle's eDelivery cloud service. You can also download the client installers and other patches from the eDelivery service:

After you install the patch (which is fairly straight forward). You will have to enable access to your forms, tasks lists and rules from within the app. You will have to use a standard computer (not a tablet) and log in to your app; go to Administration -> Manage -> Tablet Access:

On the following screen you can select which artifacts you want to expose to a tablet. Be aware that forms that display nicely on a regular PC may not show correctly on an tablet due to screen size, etc so you may want to create forms specific for mobile devices.

After enabling artifacts you will be able to access them via a tablet. To access the app via a tablet you need to point your tablet to the old planning URL (not the Workspace URL) like so: http(s)://hyperion.yourserver.com:19000/HyperionPlanning and you will see the login screen for tablet:

Then you will see the artifacts that you exposed to the tablet.

Forms:

Tasks Lists:

Rules:

As you can see, you can also access approvals and report snapshots. Don't confuse these reports with FR mobile access which is a different module/URL and not integrated within this interface. You cannot run FR reports only launch report snapshots you have defined previously via the full front end.

If you need help upgrading to 11.1.2.3 or installing the patch you can contact me for details.